A victory for common sense, not al-Fayed

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The decision to hold the inquest into the death of the Princess of Wales and Dodi Fayed is less a victory for Mohamed al-Fayed than for common sense.

The ruling was generally welcomed in legal circles this morning, causing far less surprise than Baroness Butler-Sloss’s decision to hold the inquest without a jury in the first place. Most inquests are not heard by a jury, but under the Coroners Act 1988 certain cases deemed to be in the public interest, such as deaths involving police officers or deaths in custody - inquests, in other words, in which the authorities have to